 by Rev. Jimmy Pickett
+We are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to us. Amen+ This is a day for those of us who carry scars, scars on our bodies and scars in our hearts. It is a day of deep humanity. Last Sunday, we heard the miraculous Resurrection account. Mary went to the tomb and saw Jesus who she thought was the Gardener.Whenever I hear that Easter Morning Gospel, I always feel like I’m a little outside of the scene, like I’m sitting in a pew watching something but not really part of it. I wonder how many of us can relate to that feeling? I deeply love the Gospel account of Easter Sunday Morning, but I’m always a curious listener, again, not a participant. I usually find myself more in the Paschal Mystery here, today, with this Gospel. With Thomas, not being there at first, but coming close. Whenever I hear the Gospel of Thomas, I can feel myself in that story in a very, very, tangible way. Again I’ll ask, how many of us can relate to that? Our scars tell stories, and the gift of Thomas’s encounter with Jesus is that our scars, even our open, bleeding, wounds, have a place at the table, have a place within the Church, have a God who can look us in the eye and reach out to us and say “Ya, me too. I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours. I want to see your scars, here are mine, let’s share life.” And doubt and fear are transformed into mutual love. The Holy Strange Other becomes the wounded companion along the way, helping us make it through the day, helping us make it through the hour, to get to tomorrow, to get to that next day of Eastertide. We’ve got 50 days to get through in this holy season, and thanks be to God we don’t have to do it alone. I often think of my Aunt on this day. My Aunty Mandi is a nurse and has a deep love, almost an obsession, with wound care. Whenever anyone in the family has an injury, no matter how small or how deep, she excitedly yells “Let me look at that!” Let me see, let me see, I want to get in there, I want to scoop out the debris so I can see how deep that scar is, so that I can see how deep your love is. I think that’s what happened with Thomas and Jesus. I also think of my friend Harriet, she is a retired OR nurse. When we would drive the half hour long trip to church when I was in college, she would tell me stories. One that I’ll never forget is that she was elbows deep in someone’s innards, and praying for them. Whenever she would be in the operating room, she would be touching people’s bodies in ways that only God, and nurses, do. So maybe, we should stop calling Thomas “Doubting Thomas”. I’d like to propose today that we start calling him “Nurse Thomas”. We learn as kids not to call people names, especially when they’re hurting. Thomas just lost one of his best friends a week and a half ago. Of course he was hurting, of course he was heartbroken, of course he couldn’t see, he couldn’t understand that his friends said “oh, he’s alive again”. Thomas just saw him, bleeding on a tree, and you’re saying he’s here now? No, no, I need to see that wound, let me see, let me see how deep that Love is. For Thomas, it wasn’t some mystical experience, it was seeing God face to face in the tenderness of another broken human body. Last week, according to John, Mary saw the tender brokenness of someone she thought she knew, someone she thought was the gardener tending the tomb, doing his daily work. She must have seen the scarred hands and assumed he was the gardener. Those of us who work with dirt, and shovels, and chickens, know that gardening can leave us filled with scars. So Mary thought she saw the gardener, until Jesus said, “Mary”, and that tender word, that tender name helped her to see who it really was in front of her. But I want to dwell on the scars a little bit more. As many of you know, I was a farmer before I became a priest, and still dabble in agriculture. I have some scars that were given to me by rusty nails, a protective rooster who didn’t want me to take the eggs. When I was sitting in the middle of the field, pulling this nail out of my foot, not to be too graphic, I was so thankful for Thomas, because he probably had some four letter words while Jesus was on that tree. I was sitting in the field like, “ok, well, if Jesus and Thomas could take care of this, I guess I can too.” And that scar on my leg from the protective rooster reminds me of the fierce love of God, because you do not mess with a mother hen, or a rooster, just like you don’t mess with God’s People. The work of Love can leave us with wounds on our hands, on our feet, on our hearts, but Jesus knows that. Jesus knows and comes to each one of us with a bandage, some healing ointment. A few weeks ago we had this big jar of nard that got poured out, I’m sure there was plenty left on Jesus’ hands so he could come and wipe that nard on us. That’s what he did with Thomas. In the midst of the heartbreak and the confusion and the disbelief, Thomas exclaimed “My Lord and my God!” My Lord, and my God. St. Julian of Norwich tells us that scars are nothing to be ashamed of. In her Revelations of Divine Love, one of the first known books written by a woman in English, she had this encounter with Jesus and she tried to cover up her body, she tried to hide her scars, and God looked at her and said “no, these are beautiful, because they are proof that you lived, proof that you lived a life.” So if you’re like Thomas, if you’re like me, and you’re not quite at the place where you’re ready to hear that Little Pentecost where Jesus breathes and says “the Holy Spirit be with you”, know that we have a friend in Thomas. Jesus, the Gardener, Jesus the Good Shepherd, Jesus the Divine Physician is ready standing with open arms and outstretched hands waiting for us to look, but if you’re not there, Nurse Thomas is waiting, Nurse Thomas can take you out on a little walk in the garden and say “Yup, I know, it's hard, trust me, it took me so long to get ready to see.” But then he was able to become a wounded healer, and each one of us are able to carry the scars of life and help someone else who is going through something rough. So as we continue to walk through this Great Season on the Resurrection, I invite you to be like Thomas, be a wounded healer. Reach out your hand to someone else who is struggling today. The Divine Physician will hold us all, and Nurse Thomas will carry us along the way. I preach to you in the Name of our Loving, Liberating, and Lifegiving God. Amen.  By Rev. Jimmy Pickett We have a choice to make – as a people, as a community, as a nation. That choice is played out in this morning’s Lessons from Scripture. I’m not talking about a choice about party alliance, or political issues or ideologies, I’m taking about the choice between violence and mercy, between hatred and grace. In our Gospel from Mark this morning, we hear of the martyrdom of John the Baptist under the corruption of King Herod. A birthday party that sounds like an episode of Game of Thrones stands in stark contrast to the abundant Grace and blessing upon blessing that we hear in the Letter to the Ephesians and the joyful dancing that comes when God’s people gather together to bring the Ark of the Covenant, the footstool of God, into the Holy City of Bethlehem. Although, there are a few short words that come just after King David is dancing with joy – “she despised him in her heart”. In our Gospel we hear of grudges, and scandal, and greed leading to a gross display of power and disregard for the dignity of another human being – the head of John the Baptist on a platter. This morning, I wear this orange stole, a symbol of lament that is inspired by the Bishops United Against Gun Violence, because there are too many stories in our world today that sound too close to this scene. There are too many innocent victims in the world because anger and fear are allowed to have the upper hand while mercy and justice are seen as weakness. Just yesterday, two people were killed and two others critically injured at a political rally in Pennsylvania. We have a choice. Will we let hatred for the other win the day or will we lean on the Beloved and allow the way of non-violence to show the world the Mystery of Grace revealed in the God we follow? Elsewhere in the Gospels, when talk of division comes up among the disciples about who is the greatest, Jesus immediately stops that debate and calls them to instead love and serve each other during the Last Supper as Luke tells us. And then in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus tells Peter to put away his sword when he tries to protect Jesus. As Christians, we are called to live in a new way of loving our enemies – the freely given gift of the Grace of God working in our hearts can uproot the hatred, the grudges, the grief, and the fear that leads to spiritual and sometimes even physical violence. Hatred hurts the one who is hated, the one who hates, and the whole of society. Grace and Mercy heal wounds, bind up and build up relationships, and cause communities and Creation to flourish. As Episcopalians, we have two Great Sacraments that help us to feel in our hearts and hands the Grace of God which passes all understanding. In our Baptism, the words of Ephesians ring as we are signed, sealed, and delivered by the Grace freely bestowed by the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. We also have the Baptismal Covenant to help guide us as we live into our calling – “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?” (even the ones I really don’t want to) I will, with God’s help. In the Eucharist, we are caught up in the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, who descends to hold us by the hand, to nourish and strengthen us in our calling to be the Body of Christ, loving and healing, in the world around us. Grace is freely offered; all we are called to do is lift up our heart and then go in peace to love and serve our neighbors in Jesus’ name. May God mercifully receive our prayer and give us the Grace and power to beat our swords into plows and our spears into pruning hooks, that the Good Fruits of the Gospel of Love Incarnate may grow in the soil of this land.  by Rev. Jimmy Pickett
Today’s Teaching Sermon will focus on the end. Don’t worry, not the end of all things, but the end of the liturgy, or more accurately, how the Dismissal is an integral part of our life of faith and witness in the world. The Dismissal is not like the school bell that calls us to recess nor does it dismiss us from class or excuse us from work, it is the hinge point between our worship and our witness. As Episcopalians, one of the member branches of the Anglican Communion, we are the inheritors of a particular way of living our faith out in the world. There is a branch of Practical Theology known as Anglican Social Ethics. At its core, this particular kind of witness is marked by a constantly evolving tension, at best a life giving tension, between Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. As Fr. Richard Meux Benson, founder of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, said “the necessary thing for us is to set about old things in new ways”. I wish I could give you an easy checklist of to-do’s to make for a simple and easy Anglican Social Ethic, but our tradition is so situational that each of us needs to come up with our own list based on the situation we find ourselves in. Our list of personal and corporate prayers, practices, study, rest, and work to be done is based on particular life circumstances and the particular moral questions at hand. Scripture, Tradition, and Reason (lived experience), are the collective markers that can help point us toward the right decisions and actions. Again, there is this tension between the old and the new, the particular and the general, the personal and the communal. We lean on Scripture to learn how God and humanity interact and respond to each other. My Hebrew Scripture professor in seminary, Dr. Judy Fentress-Williams, once called Scripture a love story between the Human and the Divine. We lean on the Tradition we have inherited in our worship. The words may change from generation to generation, from community to community, but the common Ordo, or shape, of the Liturgy remains. The deep and ancient rhythm of worship - of gathering together, reading and responding to the Living Word in Scripture, praying for the needs of the world (and our own needs), confession, forgiveness, peace, the offering of our gifts, the taking, blessing, breaking, and giving of the Bread of Life, and being sent out - shapes us and points us to the dream God has for us. We lean on Reason and experience to make sense of our time and place as we share this life together with our neighbors. As Anglicans, we gather around Book, and Font, and Altar to be nourished by the Ancient and the Holy in order to go out to learn with, abide with, and break bread with whoever we meet. I’ll give you a couple of examples of what this can look like on the ground and then share my experience and then I’ll invite you to reflect on how you will go out into the world with the commissioning of the Dismissal. Dr. Esther Mombo, in her article “Doing Theology from the Perspective of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians”, describes her experience. Dr. Mombo is a Kenyan Anglican, Theologian, and Professor at St. Paul’s University in Limuru, Kenya and she is a member of a community known as The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. The Circle is an eccumenical and interreligious gathering of grassroots theologians from a diverse variety of socio-economic and cultural backrounds who are committed to living life together while critically engaging with society. They do this work by studying Scripture and culture, learning from each other in a pluralistic religious environment, focusing on formation for ministry and theological education, and listening to the stories of women in order to “do theology”. The Circle looks at structures of society and questions if they are in line with the love of God and neighbor. These questions have led to actions and social reform rooted in the continual revelation of God’s work of reconciliation. Another example: Dr. Timothy Sedgwick in his article, “The Anglican Exemplary Tradition”, explains the distinct nature of Anglican Social Ethics. The Exemplary Tradition is a way of living out a practical piety where Jesus is our great exemplar, calling us to model our lives around acts of worship and hospitality. For Dr. Sedgwick, social ethics is not just a thought experiment in a classroom or a sermon illustration, but a practical set of practices for living the Christian Life that holds a Sacramental vision for the relationship between church and society. “The final end of the love of God and neighbor is given in specific intentions embodied in particular actions such as eating and drinking, care for those in need, and prayer and worship”. Now for my own experience. A year ago, when I was in my last semester at Virginia Theological Seminary, one of my professors brought a classmate and I to Nashotah House, another Episcopal Seminary out in Wisconsin for a weekend of prayer, fellowship, and conversations. VTS and Nashotah are pretty much on the opposite ends of the theological and political spectrum from each other. While there were many differences in thought, there was fruitful conversation born out of common respect, common worship, and the sharing of meals and stories. This kind of cross political and cross theological conversation helped me to dig deeper into my own call and vocation- literally dig- of being both farmer and priest. When I was about 12 years old, I began to serve as an acolyte and week after week I would stand next to the Altar. I was transfixed on the Bread that was being lifted, and broken, and shared in blessing. My theological imagination was sparked and I could never see food the same way again. Being nourished by the Body of Christ to be the Body of Christ sent me to go study Sustainable Agriculture in college where I said yes to God’s call on my life while I stood in a field of onions with community members growing food for local food pantries. And here we are now. You've heard the basic structure of Anglican Social Ethics and listened to three stories of how we can live into the tradition we have inherited. Now what is God calling you to do with your Baptism? How is God calling you out the door to be the Body of Christ? How will you respond to the commissioning of the Dismissal? How will you come back next week, changed? Amen. by Rev. Jimmy Pickett  Oftentimes when I think of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, I tend to think about John’s account. John tells us of a Jesus who is trying to not make a big scene, but Mamma Mary knows what her kid is capable of and sort of gently pushes Jesus into performing the first miracle of turning water into wine at the Wedding of Cana. But that’s not what we hear today. Mark, always seemingly running out of time, immediately shows us Jesus the exorcist, the joy of preachers everywhere during this lectionary year…
Upon first reading, this story from today’s Gospel seems like a scene out of a horror movie with a yelling priest and a kid with a spinning head. Thanks Hollywood. But upon second reading, as I sat at my friend’s kitchen table earlier this week, sharing my frustration about interpreting this text, we both came to a bit of a deeper understanding of what might have been going on here. Centuries of translation, tradition, pop culture, and less than helpful misunderstandings of mental and emotional health have been piled onto Mark’s telling of this healing miracle in Capernaum. Oftentimes the term “unclean spirit” is understood to mean a demon which makes it easy to jump to the idea of demonic possession, but when we strip away the layers of added baggage and let the original text speak for itself, we can come to a deeper understanding of what Jesus is doing for this man. As we were sitting around the table, there was one word that my friend noticed in the original Greek text that stood out, and the only reason I became aware of it is because I spoke the demon of my frustration out loud. In the light of day, that frustration dwindled away and gratitude and curiosity took its place. That one word in verse 26 translated as “unclean” is written ακάθαρτος (akathartos). This discovery got me curious about the opposite. What is the word for to clean, or purify, or to purge away? Καθαρίζω (katharizo), or in modern English, catharsis. Moments of catharsis are so important for our emotional, mental, and spiritual well being, they allow us to clear out whatever is blocking us from moving forward. In Mark’s account of this healing in Capernaum, we aren’t told anything else about the person Jesus meets, only that they cried out in a moment of catharsis. When Scripture leaves this vague emptiness of detail, Ignatious of Loyola invites us to read our lives into the text. Here we are invited to remember a good cathartic cry with a friend, or to drop our pain at the center of a labyrinth, or throw our anger into the frozen river by breaking the ice with a rock. We are also invited to think about where it is in our lives that we need Jesus to remove whatever is hindering us from living healthy and holy lives with ourselves, our neighbors, and God. What do you need to cry out? Shame? Anger? Fear? We live in a day and age of division and we will only be able to heal that division with God’s help and some catharsis. Our relationships with each other and with ourselves depend on us naming our suffering, then God can help in the transformational work of healing in our own hearts, in our community and our society. There are so many ways this healing can come about. St. Francis went out in the streets and swapped clothes with a homeless man and ate the same food he and his friends had begged for, so fear of people living on the streets lost its power over him. Some people go to the gym and punch a punching bag until their anger dissipates. One time I was watching Grey’s Anatomy and just sobbed on the kitchen floor for a good 15 minutes because I couldn't hold my grief anymore. And I felt a new kind of freedom after those tears ran out of me. Jesus said “I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly”, and here in today’s Gospel we see this gift of abundant life given. Abundant life does not mean simple, easy, anxiety free, walks through the rose garden every day (though those are nice). Abundant life means the real, authentic, angry hot tears that Jesus knows all too well. Thanks be to God for the Incarnation because our God knows intimately what it means to need a moment of catharsis in order to keep moving forward, and is telling each one of us that we will be picked up when we fall apart. It’s part of what it means to be human, to be fully alive, not just fine or ok, but real. You’re not alone in whatever you’re holding, God has given us the gift of community and the invitation to catharsis, God has given us each other that we might have abundant life. Amen. |
Mission
We believe God is calling us to cultivate a community of love, joy, hope, and healing. Jesus is our model for a life of faith, compassion, hospitality, and service. We strive to be affirming and accessible, welcoming and inclusive; we seek to promote reconciliation, exercise responsible stewardship, and embrace ancient traditions for modern lives.
Office HoursTuesday 9:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Thursday 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Friday 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Closed holidays Our gardens and grounds are open from dawn to dusk for the community to pray, rest, be. Please help us take care of this sacred space by following the outdoor ethic & principle of “leave no trace.” |
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